Vic crashed hands first on the ground with the elegance of a one-armed, one-eyed, infirm purple otter that suffered from a terrible headache after having to hear conversion attempts to a pasta religion a hundred times in the past twenty-four hours.

  Her dark claws dug on the ground. She gripped her sword firmly and didn’t drop it. The shadow armour absorbed most of the damage from the fall, but she could still picture a minecraft Steve’s “ough” in her head from the fall damage while she used the momentum to roll on the ground immediately after.

  Thrusting roots crashed through her phasing curling up body. As she finished the first roll, she propelled herself forwards, leaping a good two metres away. She ducked three times from grasping roots until finally an opening appeared and she was able to cut them with a single powerful, angry slash of her giant magic sword. A nasty sound came from the severed white plants.

  She winced as the epic melodramatic music burst in the plaza with a constant intensity. She knew what that meant.

  The high priestess yelled something about the “dark sorceress” preparing a powerful spell. Oh. Did she think that music meant she was preparing spells? How wrong of her. Pfft.

  She didn’t move, sensing no attacks come. She focused on her laboured breathing, trying to calm her panting as quickly as possible.

  A first then second disgustingly long bar of hp had popped in the air far, far ahead. She turned to it, getting up, seeing roots slowly but constantly shifting. They were particularly numerous behind her, on that undefended house she’d been thrown off from, cutting that exit off.

  It didn’t matter anymore. She had a feeling that she knew what was to come. She put her guard up.

  Before her, ten metres away, a tall, unrecognizable figure stood. The smoke clung to the ground and to what remained of the melted glacier. It dispersed where the figure appeared.

  [Alberon, Cursedblood Emperor], appeared above the boss’s hp bars.

  So… that was happening.

  She cursed. She cursed that cursedblood Emperor’s blood, heh. Heheh.

  She saw him step forwards, opening slowly his arms wide while holding that very fancy and overpriced staff of his, and physically, atrociously felt the incoming monologue. There was going to be a long little stalemate, all because dramatics required it.

  Ughhhh. She did need to win some time to get a chance to get rid of her disadvantageous status effects, but on the other hand… There was a better way to control when the fight would begin.

  “HEY!” Vic interrupted before any words had been even spoken, making the city boss still. “Hear ye, hear ye! THAT stuck up wITch! Or high priestess! Whatever!” she said, pointing at the high priestess, who was still behind ranks of guarded soldiers, “She’s a criminal! A robber! She owes me a hundred golden honours!” At that, Vic brought dramatically an indignant hand against her chest, eyeing suspiciously the rising amount of roots and branches circulating around her from afar, slowly enclosing the already enclosed plaza. “And she literally attacked me in the back like a cowardly coward when I’d done nothing but tease her just a tiny twinsy little bit beforehand! I won that prize money square and fair, and she’s just a pompous, impulsive, brainless hack! I’m innocent!” Vic paused. “…Of most of the blame, anyway!”

  There was an extremely offended and appalled noise of disgruntlement from a random, unknown, unidentified person hiding behind ranks of soldiers like a cowardly coward. Vic ignored whatever sentence had been uttered outloud, it was probably, very likely just clear nonsense that utterly failed to disprove Vic’s argument. Meanwhile, the epic, sad, dramatic music kept going while the level boss stood still, mask hiding whatever expression was lying under.

  Maybe that cult leader was trying to pry information from her and that’s why he’d let her continue to reveal all her little secrets. Good. She’d tell him only useful things.

  She scanned the faces of shocked soldiers and mages who were looking around, trying to figure out where the music was coming from, which was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. She wished them luck. Because not even luck would help them. Meanwhile, she frowned. There was something very odd about the magic in the ground… She couldn’t tell what exactly. Hm.

  She stared at the notifications on the side, seeing that the “steaming” effect was blinking on and off. A little smile drew itself on her cheeks. She only needed a little more time. Vic put a hand over her grime covered face and pulled on the baby fat of her cheeks.

  “Look at this grimy baby face straight from the wastes! Don’t judge a book by its cover, or maybe do uhh since I’m a kid, right, so trust that! You can judge whoever else however you want when it doesn’t disadvantage me. Anyway! So uh…”, Vic said, wondering what else she could say to gain a little, little more time, keeping track of the movement of the roots on her left or rather on the weird magic variations-shenanigans that were happening below there, “Yeah! That Lilith’s fancy and vain, and wears luxurious priestly garbs that flow in the wind along whatever overcompensating perfume she’s wearing for the day, but hides well the smell of the fact that she’s got the patience and smell of your below average Valorant player-”

  “High Priestess Lilyn is a perfectly level-headed, humble leader!” a mage rudely interrupted her, hidden in the masses. Vic glared straight at him with her abruptly glowing rainbow sparkly eyes that felt like ants crawling all over them.

  “Silence, simp!” Vic said, pointing at him with the tip of her sword. She didn’t know if it was the creepy cool sparkly irises or the tone of her voice, but that did silence the guy. There was an extremely odd stillness from everyone there. Huh. Weird. Those people didn’t know what a simp was, did they? Right, of course not. Well, personally, she wasn’t even quite sure what it meant either. But people did use that word when mocking others on forums in similar situations to this, so…

  …Oh, it might have been the rainbow sparkly eyes. She shut the lightwork off.

  She paused. The ground… the ground was softly rumbling. Oh. Oh that was bad, wasn’t it?

  She prepared herself mentally to quickly leap away. It was weird that the cult leader had allowed her to keep speaking that much.

  “Listen, my point is, it’s not because I look like a “street vermin” or whatever and that she looks like a saint that that is actually the case!”

  “And you’re the saint?” the high priestess yelled derisively with way too much investment, eyebrows scrunched down.

  “Yeah! Actually!” Vic said, and she would have hit her hands together if she didn’t have one hand busy with her sword. Instead she fingergunned at the high priestess Lilith. “I haven’t killed anyone! Woo! Look at me! I’m doing so good! If you would be so nice to let me go, we’ll keep it that way.”

  “You’re surrounded, you fool, you think you can plead and beg for mercy now that his Eminence is here?” the high priestess said, as the ground began imperceptibly shaking more and more. “You are weakened and exhausted, you cannot fool anyone!!”

  The eminence in question was simply staring at the back and forth, probably. She didn’t know, his mask hadn’t moved at all since the exchange had started. If she didn’t know better, she’d say that his internet connection was lagging.

  “Please!” Vic laughed. “You think I’m stuck with you?” she said, slowly pointing at them all with her five metres long magic sword, even the soldiers that were now hidden and protected by the giant roots that slowly was putting more distance between them and here. “No, no… no no no. You’re stuck with me!” She made a point of sounding unhinged.

  There was silence then, and Vic felt a smile as she saw the high priestess open her mouth to reply angrily to her.

  But it was interrupted by an old, cold, somewhat charismatic voice.

  “Are you finished?”, the city boss said, with all the pretentious tones that a cult leader confident of their own power would have.

  “Yeah, Lilith, are you finished?” Vic said, unable to fight the smirk that spread on her face. “Your god or whatever that thing is, is quite bored with your nonsense!”

  There was abruptly something different in the air. Vic’s mind raced, and she realised that the ground had stopped rumbling. All had stilled. She gulped. She needed to keep calm. This was still doable. She had a little less than two thirds of her mana left and her hp were barely dented. The “steaming” effect had also disappeared. The “chilled” one was taking a little more time. It was okay. She’d had worse odds. She could deal with the sudden shaking from time to time.

  Meanwhile, the high priestess’s face was turning red as a tomato.

  She was about to yell back when the cult leader raised his hand at the high priestess and she paused in turn. Vic squinted at the interaction.

  “Victorya, is it not?” he said, and there was that ever so slightly ominous edge to it. Ha! It’d work better if that wasn’t the name of her self-insert oc that she had often used to roleplay to be reckless and ever so slightly megalomaniac.

  “Yeah, got something on me, Bloodcursed Emperor?” She couldn’t hide the giddiness.

  Stillness, again. Was that a well known nickname?

  “I see you know who I am. Who sends you?” he asked. Vic frowned. There was no clear emotion she could read in that voice.

  She squinted.

  “Your mom”, Vic said.

  The emperor, despite wearing a copper mask of stillness, gave her the severe impression that he was squinting back.

  Vic’s eyes blew wide. A big alert popped up before her.

  >>Fatal danger incoming: Below<<

  A lot of red exclamation points appeared over the ground. All over the ground. Everywhere on the ground in the enclosed space made with the encircling roots and branches. There was no space between the [!] red exclamation points. There was nowhere where the area attack wasn’t going to be active.

  Cabrón, how the hell was she supposed to dodge an undodgeable attack that covered all the ground? Gamers would scream in panicked frustration if that ever happened out of nowhere in a video game.

  All together, the exclamation points began flickering on and off faster and faster.

  She leapt upwards as far as she could at the last moment with all of her strength. That was the only way out.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Air flowed through her messy hair. She brought her free hand down, preparing to aim while having a good view of the nesting ground of branches she’d been at the centre of. She still had momentum upwards when she anxiously waited for a single second for the “deadly danger” to burst out.

  She saw spikes of flowing pale wood burst from the earth like it was butter.

  “THE SUN IS A DEADLY LASER!” she yelled out, the miasma of plasma bursting out from her free hand, propelling her just a little bit further up while the spiky root just below her creaked, and after a panicking second where she thought the wood had resisted plasma itself, it swiftly and gratingly disintegrated with a sound like a creeping moan and a vindictive roaring combustion.

  What was going on? The game system had never lied to her. Spiky flammable branches, oh no, what a deadly foe! There wasn’t anything “fatal” about this.

  She did not manage to repress her grimace when she saw the first spiky spike change direction and aim at her just as she lost all momentum. She narrowly dodged that one by giving it a kick just at the right moment and threw herself to the side, only to see two others next to her, having predicted that movement. She cut the plasma stream off, cutting those two with her sword, only to see them dented instead of fully cut off.

  Oh. Oh shit.

  Her magic sword had never been stopped like this.

  The motion did let her throw herself back, but now she was freefalling and had nothing to push or pull on. She suddenly shivered far too much and she cursed the freezing status effect.

  Still in the air, an exclamation point narrowly saved her and she intercepted a strike against her left leg with her shaking sword, sending her off course again, falling with her back towards the ground. She screeched when she didn’t get the time to defend against one of the spikes that reached her shadow armour on her back and it trembled against the onslaught. It brought her absurdly high in the sky. She thrust her sword between her legs, reaching that spike, and used the deep dent she’d made in the wood to throw herself downwards in a spin. She was falling downwards head first, now.

  Other spikes flew down, aiming to harm beyond reason, aiming to… kill? Mierda.

  She managed to land on the diagonal side of one of the flowing spikes and managed to roll down on it, making two jointed attacks phase right through her. The flowing branch she’d stepped on instead took the grunt of the attack, and was cut in three.

  Point taken. Spiky tip was super sharp, the rest of the wooden body was not resistant enough against it.

  …She felt that it’d be better if the pits of those spikes never went through her shadow armour. There was something… just… wrong with the magic itself. It was weird.

  Well, she better not let a blow land. She had no wish to change jobs and become an unprompted pi?ata!

  The two pieces of the cut spike started falling, and with a growing horror, she saw the broken tip start regenerating.

  Hell nah. HEEeeell nah. That was just overpowered.

  Her eyes scanned quickly her surroundings, swinging her sword and hitting another flowing spike, propelling herself against it again to dodge in a smooth arc another blow that would have reached her stomach. She smiled through her little gymnastic prowesses as she found what she’d been searching for.

  That scorched area was still fuming.

  So it appeared that the first disintegrated bone white “wooden” spikes she’d first destroyed had not regenerated.

  Was it only the plasma beam that could destroy those wooden skewers?

  Alright. Dully noted. She didn’t need more information to know what to do.

  She’d need both hands for this. Hm.

  She latched with her free hand and dark shadow claw on the body of one of the spikes and threw herself down, away from the attack of one of the innumerable branches. It dug into the spike she’d had latched on and broke its trunk halfway.

  It’d be better to do it the closest possible to the roots to not leave that small victory to chance. She grimaced as she saw there was no room down, but that every centimetre of dirt available had been replaced by the body of the spikes.

  Vic blinked, and abruptly, found herself in darkness.

  She panicked as she realised that this was the case because all the branches-- or whatever they were, had been rushing towards her, leaving no room between them, blocking the sun’s light.

  In the pitch black darkness, Vic released her sword.

  It dropped from her hand.

  She reinforced the shadow armour, more so than usual, and threw her hands diagonally upwards as she felt the shadow armour surrounding her legs squeezed in between two roots.

  “The sun is a deadly laser”, she whispered through her short, laboured breaths.

  And all was scorching white light and devastating deafening noise. Her eyes closed from the abrupt blinding light.

  The temperature rose, so much so that she had to reinforce again her shadow armour. She didn’t tend to stack the shadow armours, they could inconvenience her moves a lot and reduce her mobility. The bigger the amount of layers, the more likely it was for them all to randomly break. And it was a tiny bit pricy if she spammed the spell too much instead of dodging like a smart person would. Feeling finally room around her feet, she gave a kick and began spinning slowly to thoroughly destroy all those bloody cursed spikes.

  Some of them retreated, but only ashes would be left.

  She smiled. She could again see the sky through thick fumes. The pale roots trembled, cracked and burst from the continued attack that she decided to call from now on “her sunny self-inflicted sunburn”. She reinforced once more the shadow armour just to see a splatter of plasma crash upon her shoulder. The layers of the shadow armour trembled, and the heat nearly burnt there.

  That was why she never did prolonged attacks with that spell. It kept on intensifying until the spell didn’t need her mana to keep going at the cost of losing her control of it and sudden jets of the stuff could burst out in an absolutely unpredictable way.

  Vic bit down on nothing and stared at the sizzling blinding plasma over her shoulder. The uppermost layer of the shadow armour began trembling until shattering and a whole portion of the fourth reinforced layer caved in. There were three others left. It was okay. She needed to keep a cool mind against the lethal temperatures and her own impending fiery doom, haha!

  The third layer over her shoulder was now shaking violently.

  She scrunched up her nose, trying to dislodge that annoying bit of the scorching plasma with a bit of movement. It didn’t work for most of the fluid. And for now, she couldn’t stop her sunny self-inflicted sunburn. She could still hear the rumbling of destroyed freakily resilient pale wood. There was resistance from it. Maybe he was constantly replacing the destroyed ones with new ones. It would be better if she didn’t cut off her plasma beams yet… And her little issue wasn’t that urgent for now. She had at least twenty seconds before all the layers of the armour gave in and she roasted like an overcook boiled egg. At least it would be instantaneous.

  Feeling abruptly that she really was unto something, she tried to focus on the shaking third layer over her shoulder. What if… she made the shadowy magic layer shake more? Sure, usually, that would make the protective layer break, but… she actually needed to shake off that sizzling plasma on her shoulder that might be about to cause quite the stupid perfectly avoidable death.

  She began making the second layer beneath it shake along the first one. It was a bit of an unusual motion because generally she tried focusing on doing the opposite, but she quickly got the hang out of it.

  She began intensifying the wavering motion, but had to do it too much, because the second layer burst entirely to pieces before her very surprised eyes.

  She raised her eyebrows. Oh. She’d overdone it.

  That was the moment where what used to be the third layer began caving in too. She quickly formed yet another layer beneath her first lowest one. Holy crap. That was kind of close. And getting wasteful in its mana consumption, huh.

  She spun a few more times absent-mindedly while her growing beams of erratic sun spit reduced to scorched ash the previously deadly, inescapable trap. She was now reaching its edges and the much weaker surrounding roots and branches. The spinning did help get some more of the scorching plasma off her. Only a few drawn out droplets were left.

  But on the other hand, she did want to continue her little experiment…

  She focused then on all the shadowy layers over her shoulder and began slowly making them waver. The trick seemed to be… to synchronise all the layers’ movement, perhaps? They shook and shook and shook away the last of the mana, without even breaking in any dramatic way, even if she forced the motion in a very excessive manner, so much so that it ended up looking like a tormented sea. Ho! How fascinating! She had no idea that she could do that with the shadowy armour. Perhaps she could get more uses out of it now if she got creative enough… She’d have to experiment on it…

  A notification abruptly popped up.

  [Shadowy armour has evolved!]

  [Shadowy armour has levelled up!]x5

  Oh. Oh! Oooooooooooh!!! Amazing!!

  She couldn’t help but smile as she forcefully shut off the two plasma beams. It’d been a while since she’d hit a plateau with that ability! Ow-yeah that was so cool!

  She pumped a fist up proudly. And that happened right on time in a fight! Amazing, the levels up might prove critical since that did make the protective spell even more powerful!

  She squinted at the shadowy armour over her arms, and saw some sort of… weird interaction between the layers. Oh my. There were little purple sparkles from time to time that faded to leave a starkly black blotch of ink that faded after some time. Huh… How mysterious.

  There was noise ahead. A looming figure of copper and blue fabrics decorated with runic motifs stood on a moving bundle of branches harmoniously spreading in weird patterns, presenting the guy as very godly and pompous as was probably the intent.

  All Vic could think was “oh crap, I’d forgotten about the fight”, before immediately squinting at her enemy and thinking about what a lazy ass the guy was to not even walk here.

  Vic said it as much.

  “Are you too old to walk, old man?” she asked.

  Said old man did not reply. There was an uncanny silence that flowed freely along the wind.

  Vic stared around, seeing no one else along the gigantic expanding mess of white branches and the thickening pale fog. There was no trace of the high priestess nor of any of the squadron of annoying guards. Suspicious…

  “This is your last chance”, the Cursedblood Emperor said just as the omnipresent music reached one of its dramatic peaks. That was soooo unfair. No matter the theme song of a boss, she could never do the same. Maybe she had a deaf ear when it came to music, who knew. “I suppose you are… proficient in your skills. But do not overestimate your abilities. You are undoubtedly running out of mana.”

  Oh no no, not again. Were those people deaf, amnesiac, or simply plain stupid? She couldn’t help plain stupidity.

  And also, what a bore! He wasn’t even trying to roast her back. How dull, how dull!

  “HA!” Vic braggingly replied, pointing at him. “I could keep going all day! I’m a BOTTOMLESS PIT OF MANA, you fool! And you’ve all gotten yourself into this mess, I’m without blame! You insufferable cultists. You don’t even know what you’re guilty of.”

  “Ah, yes, how fitting to talk of guilt. You claim not to be a criminal, but your actions speak, or at least will speak louder than your words.” He paused. “If you are innocent as you claim… lay down your weapons and relinquish this fight. Allow me to make light on this incident. No harm will come to you, as you’ve pointedly avoided killing senselessly. You will be treated as you have treated my flock. You will not fear for your life during your interrogation.”

  Vic squinted. Why was the god getting cold feet?

  “Are you running out of mana?” she asked, making a point of showing off how smug she felt because for once she was the one asking that damned question. “Did that little annoying attack take that much of a toll on you?”

  The god or whatever he was tilted his head.

  There was a chuckle, but it was devoid of humour.

  “Ah, child”, he lightly said. “If I truly were to wilfully fight you without restraint, you would be quite dead.”

  Vic paused. He was serious. He meant those words, but perhaps… he was overestimating himself. Or underestimating her. Or being an ugly lying liar.

  She’d never fought a god before though… so she was just a little bit scared. But technically, this guy wasn’t a god, was he? The system had called him an emperor, not a god. The game system would have very much told her if he were a god. He might just be a self-proclaimed divinity who was very well hiding beneath petty tricks to compensate for his lack of actual power.

  “Hey”, Vic said with a completely relaxed tone to prove how unafraid she was of the threat, “You know, I’m generally the one that says that! Not with those exact words however, I’m not that much of a snob. If I WERE to fight you all out, you might survive since apparently you’re a god, but you wouldn’t have a city to rule anymore! BAM! All gone, in an instant, because of you and your overreaction.”

  She slammed a closed fit in her open hand. The bloodcursed emperor’s composure did not show anything. He really wasn’t reacting. Or if he did beneath his mask, she couldn’t see it. That was probably the point of the mask. Damn it.

  “Understand? I have nukes! More or less! That’s why you should let me go! And stop with this nonsense…” Vic couldn’t help how she sounded so annoyed. Because she was annoyed. Incredibly so. There was clearly no point in restraining that annoyance. She was never coming back here. And she’d make a reminder to slap her face a dozen of times if she ever considered entering a city before having truly checked if they were misled batshit insane cultists. “Oh, oh and you should totally give me back that gold you owe me. T’is not my fault your underlings attacked me mostly out of nowhere.”

  The cult leader didn’t reply. A whisk of wind whirled in their eery surroundings.

  “Then surrender”, he said, looking down on her from above. His staff was firmly set on his platform of white bark while he kept an arm behind his back. “Let the truth allow this conflict to be settled like rain cleanses the earth of its blood after a devastating battle. Prove your innocence with good will and cooperation. All you need to do is provide the very essence of truth and for it to be acknowledged as such by our confessor.”

  “And then you’d let me go?” Vic asked loudly, rising one of her eyebrows questioningly. “With the money?”

  “Depending on what you would reveal, yes, there is a possibility, albeit small, that you’d be released”, he said without emotion. She opened her mouth and he interrupted her. “With the money, yes, as you were about to ask again”, he added. Vic closed her mouth. She felt her fists clench. She couldn’t read him. She couldn’t read him at all.

  “A truly innocent stranger would accept this offered olive branch”, he simply say. “Thus, I ask: What do you do and what do you say, spiteful outsider?”

  Vic stared and bit her tongue. This felt fishy… but would she just screw herself even more by fighting him? Of course, it’d put her in a bad light if she were to refuse… But that was on purpose, wasn’t it?

  She tilted her head from side to side, as though she were deep in thought and considering the possible consequences of both choices.

  And she allowed silence to build itself up between the fog and the wind, just like that “god” had done before, because she could be as dramatic as that pretentious prick was being if she wanted to.